Forced - or False - Intimacy

One of my classes this semester has required that I obtain a Second Life account. For anyone who doesn't know what that means, it's a virtual world - complete with obscene amounts of commerce, fabulous shoes, and an overall disregard for morality. Perhaps I'm being a little harsh - especially considering the amount of fun I'm having on it. While I'm working on an extensive project within the environment, I'm also learning how to be an above average stripper (one of the few readily available jobs within this world). I've befriended people from around the country and the world - and even a couple of horses and a unicorn.
But as much fun as this alternative reality is, a form of escapism with highly detailed graphics and often some really great music, it's still managing to leave me with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
One man that I've met on Second Life told me the other night about women who have attempted to blur the line between Second Life and Real Life.
So my thoughts on this...
With the anonymity that Second Life offers its users, along with its devolution into ... well, a lack of morality ... it's easy for people to share more of the private things about their lives. If no one knows who you are, it seems safer to admit to the darker bits of your soul, right?
For those who know where their boundaries are within this world, that can be fine. After all, I'm fairly certain that my friend the horse in Second Life is NOT a horse in Real Life. There's some fantasy elements that surround everything here - and who knows if what anyone says is the truth.
But there are people in this world who have problems separating the fantasy from the reality - and so when they appear in this alternate world, can come to confuse Second and Real. Or is it Real and Second?
One of the founders of Second Life, on the program's five year anniversary last year, made some disparaging comments about the user base of Second Life. Basically, he suggested that the people who comprised the bulk of its users tended to be misfits and unable to function within real society - and that they were drawn to this other reality where they could create alter egos of themselves - avatars who would be the cool people they could not be in their own lives.

I guess its this combination of what the supposed user base is, with the false intimacy that the environment often creates. Such an unstable combination makes me worry at times that even allowing people to know I'm in Illinois (that's as far as I go with my own details) is too much.

Maybe, from now on, my avatar will be from Missouri.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Every time Alexandra needs her haircut, the following argument ensues: "But, Mom, I want CURLY hair!"
Yes, she's seven years old (I didn't start begging for a perm until I was like 11!), but she's pretty on top of her appearance and all that. And she wants curly hair.
Right now, it's straighter than anything, blond, and shines in the sun. It's so pretty - and she hates it. She wants curly hair. At least she's not as bad as I was and still likes the color of her hair.

My hair used to be just as straight - and I hated it. Luckily (at the time, I would have thought so, at least), it was the 80s and I was able to convince my mother that I should have a perm and my hair should be curly.

We won't discuss the poodle-like perms that ensued.

Anyway - luckily (and I truly do believe that this IS lucky) I survived the eighties - and I know the damage that perms do to one's hair. She so is NOT getting a perm.

And my hair problems? Well, I guess I got what I wanted. I realized tonight, as I looked at my windblown mess of hair that it's just the amount of curl that I'd always wanted when I was in junior high - I got my 80s curliness - just a couple of decades late. I spent what seems like (and may have been) a couple of years attempting to straighten it - blowdrying, straightening irons, but the straight never stuck.

Tonight I've decided to accept the semi-tangled mop of loose curls that I'd have traded for straight and silky hair in a heartbeat. Instead of complaining about the fact that my hair has a mind of its own, I'm going to embrace it.

I'm hoping that setting this precedent with Alexandra will model better hair-esteem.
I couldn't bear to see her beautiful straight hair in frizzy poodle curls!